The Right Kind of Gold Rush
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2 Peter 1:5
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The Passionate Pursuit of Excellence
At four years old, Stephen Davey and his older brother raided the medicine cabinet for what looked like orange candy — it was aspirin, and both boys ended up on emergency room tables having their stomachs pumped. Davey opens with that memory to make a point about virtue: what we value and what's actually good for us aren't always the same thing. He contrasts the world's billion-dollar obsession with age-reversing supplements against Peter's own supplement list in 2 Peter 1:5-8, seven qualities every believer is urged to add to their faith, starting with virtue, defined here as excellence, doing what God assigned you with focus and urgency. Davey tells of an 83-year-old Sunday school teacher who rode a Greyhound bus overnight to a conference just to become a better teacher, decades into faithfully teaching fifth-grade boys. The question isn't how long you'll live. It's whether you're pursuing excellence with the time you've got.
Rafting on Whitewater
A rafting guide in Zimbabwe once told a group heading down the Zambezi's Class 8 rapids exactly what to do when, not if, their raft flipped: stay in the rough water, because the calm water near the banks is where the crocodiles wait. Stephen Davey uses that image to open 2 Peter 1:3-4, where the apostle reminds struggling believers that God has already granted them everything they need for life and godliness — not a ribbon to admire, Davey says, but a permanent royal grant meant to be switched on and used. Peter calls God's promises "precious and very great," the kind that reshape a believer's appetites and associations from the inside out, and describes escaping sin's grip not as gritted-teeth avoidance but as genuine freedom. The takeaway lands with force: God doesn't give us what we can handle — He empowers us to handle what we've been given.
The Crowded Life
"Rizz," "adulting," "dumbphone," "brain-rot," "doomscrolling" — Merriam-Webster is adding 5,000 new words this year, and Stephen Davey uses that list to paint a picture of a world drowning in noise, where the average American now processes 300 news items a day. Into that flood, Peter writes a strange prayer in 2 Peter 1:2: not that believers would receive grace and peace, but that it would multiply — the same word once used for a river overflowing its banks. Davey unpacks common grace, saving grace, and what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace, showing how the real thing empowers believers to handle hardship with actual happiness and answer critics with kindness instead of noise of their own. Peace, he insists, was never a promise of a quiet world — it's the presence of God inside a loud one. The prescription is simple: turn down the volume, and open the Book.
What to Remember With 30 Seconds to Live
Days after Charlie Kirk's assassination, tens of thousands of new chapter requests poured into his organization — ten times what it had before. Stephen Davey opens with that story, along with Tertullian's old line that the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church, before turning to Peter's own words to a persecuted first-century audience in 2 Peter 1:1. Writing to believers who were being beaten, exiled, and killed for their faith, Peter reminds them of three things no one can take away: they share the same saving faith as the apostles, they carry the same priceless treasure of salvation, and they hold the same unshakable truth that Jesus Christ is both God and Savior. Davey frames it simply — if you had only thirty seconds left to live, this is what would actually matter.
The Real Thing!
Last year Coca-Cola spent five billion dollars on advertising a drink that started life in 1886 as a cocaine-laced "medicinal tonic" promising to cure headaches and fatigue. Stephen Davey opens 2 Peter with that story of false advertising to introduce an 80-year-old apostle, writing from a Roman prison just weeks from execution, determined to warn the church away from counterfeit gospels. Peter signs his letter with both names, Simeon and Peter, refusing to hide the failure behind the faith, and calls himself not an apostle of stature but a slave, a man with no agenda but his Master's will. Davey unpacks the phrase "Jesus Christ" as the shortest creed in existence: the man is the divine Savior. It's an old fisherman's last plea to hold onto the real thing before it's too late.
The Final Song (Part 2)
King Louis XIV, dying, called his son to his bedside and warned him, "Kings die like everyone else." Stephen Davey opens with a string of famous last words to introduce David's own — his final recorded speech in 1 Chronicles 28-29, delivered to his leaders and his son near the end of his life. God had already told David no on his greatest dream, building the temple, handing that honor to Solomon instead — and rather than nursing bitterness, David models surrender, thanking God for what he was given rather than mourning what he wasn't. He then pulls Solomon aside for a father-son charge that has nothing to do with success or comfort and everything to do with knowing God. The sermon closes with David's final psalm of worship, a king who took off his own crown before the King of kings. It's a fitting last song from the shepherd who became Israel's singer.
The Final Song
King Louis XIV, dying, called his son to his bedside and warned him, "Kings die like everyone else." Stephen Davey opens with a string of famous last words to introduce David's own — his final recorded speech in 1 Chronicles 28-29, delivered to his leaders and his son near the end of his life. God had already told David no on his greatest dream, building the temple, handing that honor to Solomon instead — and rather than nursing bitterness, David models surrender, thanking God for what he was given rather than mourning what he wasn't. He then pulls Solomon aside for a father-son charge that has nothing to do with success or comfort and everything to do with knowing God. The sermon closes with David's final psalm of worship, a king who took off his own crown before the King of kings. It's a fitting last song from the shepherd who became Israel's singer.
Do Babies Really Go To Heaven? (Part 2)
After Nathan's confrontation, David and Bathsheba watch their newborn son grow sick and, on the seventh day, die — and David's response stuns his own servants: he stops fasting, gets up, washes, worships, and eats. Stephen Davey uses David's grief in 2 Samuel 12 to tackle one of the hardest questions a believer faces — do babies who die really go to heaven? Working from Psalm 139, he shows David describing his own formation in the womb as the deliberate handiwork of God, and argues that life, and personhood, begin at conception. From there he walks through what scripture does and doesn't say about infants, sin, and salvation, landing on David's own confidence that his son wasn't lost, only gone ahead. "I shall go to him," David says, "but he will not return to me" — and Davey leaves grieving parents with that same hope of reunion.
Do Babies Really Go To Heaven? (Part 1)
After Nathan's confrontation, David and Bathsheba watch their newborn son grow sick and, on the seventh day, die — and David's response stuns his own servants: he stops fasting, gets up, washes, worships, and eats. Stephen Davey uses David's grief in 2 Samuel 12 to tackle one of the hardest questions a believer faces — do babies who die really go to heaven? Working from Psalm 139, he shows David describing his own formation in the womb as the deliberate handiwork of God, and argues that life, and personhood, begin at conception. From there he walks through what scripture does and doesn't say about infants, sin, and salvation, landing on David's own confidence that his son wasn't lost, only gone ahead. "I shall go to him," David says, "but he will not return to me" — and Davey leaves grieving parents with that same hope of reunion.
Telling the Truth to God
For 23 years, Katherine Power lived under a borrowed name in Oregon — new house, new family, new life — until the weight of a secret finally drove her to turn herself in. Stephen Davey opens with that story to introduce Psalm 51, David's own journal entry after Nathan ended his year of hiding, handed over to Israel's choirmaster to be sung by everyone who ever needed it. Davey traces five movements through the psalm: David begging for mercy, owning his sin without a single excuse, admitting the problem runs deeper than his actions to his very nature, asking God to create a clean heart out of nothing, and resolving to teach other sinners the way back. Confession isn't explaining yourself. It's telling God the truth and letting Him do what only He can do.